SOUTH WESTERN LIMITED, JUNE 26TH, 1942

SOUTH WESTERN LIMITED, JUNE 26TH, 1942

Mr. A. B. Parker.

Beloved Brother, — I did not think it well to keep your letters until I return — nearly a month-and so I requested Arthur to take them to you.

I am sorry ——— deleted the remarks relative to Numbers 21, as I think they would help many on the subject before us. I have no time or opportunity to go in detail into what ——— says, but Numbers 21 in all versions supports what he rejected. “Then sang Israel this song, Rise up, well! sing unto it”. Although the Hebrew may be ‘response’ in some cases, it is translated “sing” many times and this should be accepted ^[p. 270] especially as the lines in Numbers 21 are called a song, sung by Israel and they praise the well.

Nor can we rightly say hymn 126, verse 3, is praise to the Father. It comes after praise to the Son, and I always believed, and do now, that it is an ascription indirectly to the Holy Spirit — a portion for Him. To limit that verse as a Gift for which we praise the Father and the Son — that the Spirit is not to be praised — is not in keeping with the spirit of the hymn. ‘Glorying in the Trinity’ implies praise to the three Persons. It is a question of what the writer had in his mind. The hymn was intended to be praise to the Trinity, I am assured. There is a doxology much used in which the Spirit is an object of praise and I have no doubt Montgomery, the author of the hymn, would accept this.

The letter as to Ephesians 1 I leave until I hear from ——— . Pardon pencil. We have been thinking tonight of you all as with dear Mr. Bradshaw and shall continue to look up for him.

Affectionately,
James Taylor.